This chapter explores the ways in which particular liberal notions of personal autonomy sit uneasily with certain cultural practices, especially those of ‘traditional’ or nonliberal groups. It argues ...
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This chapter explores the ways in which particular liberal notions of personal autonomy sit uneasily with certain cultural practices, especially those of ‘traditional’ or nonliberal groups. It argues that idealized, substantive ideals of autonomy can impede attempts to understand, evaluate, and where necessary, reform cultural traditions. The particular example that provides the focus for this chapter is that of the public debate on arranged and forced marriages among some (mostly Muslim) South Asians in Briton, a practice which has in recent years attracted the attention of British media, politicians, and the public. By examining the ways in which arranged and forced marriage have been framed in public debates in Britain, this discussion sheds light both on the limitations of the liberal autonomy paradigm — with its emphasis on choice and consent — and demonstrates the importance of engaging minority communities in the evaluation and reform of their own traditions.Less

Monique Deveaux

Published in print: 2006-11-30

This chapter explores the ways in which particular liberal notions of personal autonomy sit uneasily with certain cultural practices, especially those of ‘traditional’ or nonliberal groups. It argues that idealized, substantive ideals of autonomy can impede attempts to understand, evaluate, and where necessary, reform cultural traditions. The particular example that provides the focus for this chapter is that of the public debate on arranged and forced marriages among some (mostly Muslim) South Asians in Briton, a practice which has in recent years attracted the attention of British media, politicians, and the public. By examining the ways in which arranged and forced marriage have been framed in public debates in Britain, this discussion sheds light both on the limitations of the liberal autonomy paradigm — with its emphasis on choice and consent — and demonstrates the importance of engaging minority communities in the evaluation and reform of their own traditions.

This book analyses the prospects for services integration in South Asia, focusing on member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, ...
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This book analyses the prospects for services integration in South Asia, focusing on member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. SAARC turned to trade promotion in order to achieve greater regional integration, starting with the signing of the SAARC Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) in April 1993. The book discusses the role and performance of services within the region and identifies those services and areas which offer good and varied prospects for intra-regional integration. It also assesses the status of liberalization and reforms as well as current levels of intra-regional engagement in services in order to highlight the policy environment and existing opportunities and interests in the regional market. Furthermore, the book looks at multilateral and extra-regional/bilateral commitments made by the member countries of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) in services and their positions on key issues in order to evaluate their preparedness to commit under SAFTA. Finally, the book considers negotiating priorities in different services and on cross-cutting issues to point out possible modalities for negotiation.Less

Integrating Services in South Asia : Trade, Investment, and Mobility

Rupa Chanda

Published in print: 2011-10-24

This book analyses the prospects for services integration in South Asia, focusing on member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. SAARC turned to trade promotion in order to achieve greater regional integration, starting with the signing of the SAARC Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) in April 1993. The book discusses the role and performance of services within the region and identifies those services and areas which offer good and varied prospects for intra-regional integration. It also assesses the status of liberalization and reforms as well as current levels of intra-regional engagement in services in order to highlight the policy environment and existing opportunities and interests in the regional market. Furthermore, the book looks at multilateral and extra-regional/bilateral commitments made by the member countries of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) in services and their positions on key issues in order to evaluate their preparedness to commit under SAFTA. Finally, the book considers negotiating priorities in different services and on cross-cutting issues to point out possible modalities for negotiation.

Regional integration remains unfulfilled in South Asia due to a general lack of dynamism and political will. Despite progress on the bilateral front between member countries of the South Asian ...
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Regional integration remains unfulfilled in South Asia due to a general lack of dynamism and political will. Despite progress on the bilateral front between member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the bilateral relationship between India and Pakistan has proved to be a major hindrance. This chapter discusses the potential benefits of services integration under the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) by analyzing trends in services growth, output, employment, investment, and trade in each of the countries in the region (India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives). Based on performance and contribution characteristics, it identifies a representative set of services and issues that hold most promise for discussion under SAFTA. These include two infrastructure or producer services (energy and telecommunications), two social services (education and healthcare), and one commercial service (tourism).Less

Why Services Integration?

Rupa Chanda

Published in print: 2011-10-24

Regional integration remains unfulfilled in South Asia due to a general lack of dynamism and political will. Despite progress on the bilateral front between member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the bilateral relationship between India and Pakistan has proved to be a major hindrance. This chapter discusses the potential benefits of services integration under the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) by analyzing trends in services growth, output, employment, investment, and trade in each of the countries in the region (India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives). Based on performance and contribution characteristics, it identifies a representative set of services and issues that hold most promise for discussion under SAFTA. These include two infrastructure or producer services (energy and telecommunications), two social services (education and healthcare), and one commercial service (tourism).

By focusing on the celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (milad) by South Asian Muslim women in Edmonton, Canada, this chapter refocuses the usual consideration of Islam as public and ...
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By focusing on the celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (milad) by South Asian Muslim women in Edmonton, Canada, this chapter refocuses the usual consideration of Islam as public and male-oriented. Immigrant and ethnic Canadian Muslim women gather in homes and perform the prayers and recited texts that are not strictly considered music, employing texts and styles that are gathered from different traditions. The Arabic and Urdu languages are used separately and together, and distinctive styles and genres of worship are mixed to create musical practices traditional in Islam and new to Canada. The creativity of the Muslim women is considerable as it further creates new spaces for Islam that then becomes part of their religious and immigrant experiences in Canada.Less

When Women Recite : “Music” and Islamic Immigrant Experience

Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

Published in print: 2005-01-13

By focusing on the celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (milad) by South Asian Muslim women in Edmonton, Canada, this chapter refocuses the usual consideration of Islam as public and male-oriented. Immigrant and ethnic Canadian Muslim women gather in homes and perform the prayers and recited texts that are not strictly considered music, employing texts and styles that are gathered from different traditions. The Arabic and Urdu languages are used separately and together, and distinctive styles and genres of worship are mixed to create musical practices traditional in Islam and new to Canada. The creativity of the Muslim women is considerable as it further creates new spaces for Islam that then becomes part of their religious and immigrant experiences in Canada.

Roughly 1.6 million Muslims reside in Britain today, of whom one million are British of South Asian origin, or “BrAsians.” Within a context of increased visibility and notoriety for BrAsian Muslims ...
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Roughly 1.6 million Muslims reside in Britain today, of whom one million are British of South Asian origin, or “BrAsians.” Within a context of increased visibility and notoriety for BrAsian Muslims in the United Kingdom, of moral panics over Muslim youth, of an upsurge in racist violence, and of antiracist mobilizations, the rap group Fun^Da^Mental emerged onto the music scene and released its first album in 1994. Fun^Da^Mental serves as an important pop culture correction to mainstream views about Muslim youth in the United Kingdom. Militant yet inclusive and open, rejectionist yet deeply concerned with education and dialogue, Muslim and black and British/punk, and global in their concern, they provide a very different, multiplexed, and more useful vision of what it might mean to be “Muslim” in today’s Britain.Less

Fun^Da^Mental’s “Jihad Rap”

Ted Swedenburg

Published in print: 2010-07-19

Roughly 1.6 million Muslims reside in Britain today, of whom one million are British of South Asian origin, or “BrAsians.” Within a context of increased visibility and notoriety for BrAsian Muslims in the United Kingdom, of moral panics over Muslim youth, of an upsurge in racist violence, and of antiracist mobilizations, the rap group Fun^Da^Mental emerged onto the music scene and released its first album in 1994. Fun^Da^Mental serves as an important pop culture correction to mainstream views about Muslim youth in the United Kingdom. Militant yet inclusive and open, rejectionist yet deeply concerned with education and dialogue, Muslim and black and British/punk, and global in their concern, they provide a very different, multiplexed, and more useful vision of what it might mean to be “Muslim” in today’s Britain.

This chapter discusses South Asian subaltern studies as well as their adaptation by Latin Americanist historian Florencia Mallon and by the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. It is important to ...
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This chapter discusses South Asian subaltern studies as well as their adaptation by Latin Americanist historian Florencia Mallon and by the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. It is important to keep in mind the differences between the original projects of South Asian Subaltern Studies Group formulated in terms of querying the “historic failure of the nation to come to its own” and of making clear that, “it is the study of this failure which constitutes the central problematic of the historiography of colonial India.” Although one can say that it is this problematic that engages Mallon's and the Latin American Group's adaptation, in both cases, there is a lack of attention to the fact that Latin America is not a country—like postpartition India—and that the many countries of Latin America obtained their independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century and not in 1947.Less

Are Subaltern Studies Postmodern or Postcolonial? The Politics and Sensibilities of Geohistorical Locations

Walter D. Mignolo

Published in print: 2012-08-26

This chapter discusses South Asian subaltern studies as well as their adaptation by Latin Americanist historian Florencia Mallon and by the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. It is important to keep in mind the differences between the original projects of South Asian Subaltern Studies Group formulated in terms of querying the “historic failure of the nation to come to its own” and of making clear that, “it is the study of this failure which constitutes the central problematic of the historiography of colonial India.” Although one can say that it is this problematic that engages Mallon's and the Latin American Group's adaptation, in both cases, there is a lack of attention to the fact that Latin America is not a country—like postpartition India—and that the many countries of Latin America obtained their independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century and not in 1947.

This introductory chapter discusses how literary scholars, reviewers, and especially NetSAP book club members shift among various models of what constitutes South Asian authenticity in the United ...
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This introductory chapter discusses how literary scholars, reviewers, and especially NetSAP book club members shift among various models of what constitutes South Asian authenticity in the United States. It explores how ideologies of authenticity shape communal practices of reading among South Asian American readers. Such ideologies can serve to reinforce gender inequality in the construction of transnational South Asian literary culture, promote ethnic homogeneity, and encourage complacency around their own privilege, even as South Asian American readers envision the terms of South Asian belonging in the United States as based in ideals of gender equality, ethnic heterogeneity, secularism, and class and caste consciousness. In this way, ideologies of authenticity, as they operate in transnational South Asian literary culture, produce ambivalence as a structuring feature of South Asian belonging in the United States.Less

Mad for Difference : Authenticity, Ambivalence, and the Cosmopolitan South Asian American Reader

Tamara Bhalla

Published in print: 2016-10-15

This introductory chapter discusses how literary scholars, reviewers, and especially NetSAP book club members shift among various models of what constitutes South Asian authenticity in the United States. It explores how ideologies of authenticity shape communal practices of reading among South Asian American readers. Such ideologies can serve to reinforce gender inequality in the construction of transnational South Asian literary culture, promote ethnic homogeneity, and encourage complacency around their own privilege, even as South Asian American readers envision the terms of South Asian belonging in the United States as based in ideals of gender equality, ethnic heterogeneity, secularism, and class and caste consciousness. In this way, ideologies of authenticity, as they operate in transnational South Asian literary culture, produce ambivalence as a structuring feature of South Asian belonging in the United States.

The South Asian American population includes immigrant Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. This chapter highlights initiatives of South Asian Christians to evangelize fellow South Asian immigrants, ...
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The South Asian American population includes immigrant Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. This chapter highlights initiatives of South Asian Christians to evangelize fellow South Asian immigrants, often in cooperation with nonimmigrant evangelical groups and volunteers. Three cases are examined: (1) Indian evangelists, (2) Telugu Lutheran congregations, and (3) a Christian center in the heart of Chicago's South Asian community. “What we do is friendship evangelism,” explains a staff member at the Christian center. “We want to be the aroma, the love, and the hands and feet of Jesus in the community. We live the Gospel first, and then we give it vocally.”Less

Evangelizing Fellow Immigrants : South Asian Christians

Paul D. Numrich

Published in print: 2009-10-01

The South Asian American population includes immigrant Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. This chapter highlights initiatives of South Asian Christians to evangelize fellow South Asian immigrants, often in cooperation with nonimmigrant evangelical groups and volunteers. Three cases are examined: (1) Indian evangelists, (2) Telugu Lutheran congregations, and (3) a Christian center in the heart of Chicago's South Asian community. “What we do is friendship evangelism,” explains a staff member at the Christian center. “We want to be the aroma, the love, and the hands and feet of Jesus in the community. We live the Gospel first, and then we give it vocally.”

This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans ...
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This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans (Desis), especially youth, engage with these Hindi language films with English subtitles on a number of levels. The chapter focuses on the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films in two locations in the South Asian diaspora: Silicon Valley, CA and Queens, NY. Ethnographic and sociolinguistic data of conversational exchanges, commentary during viewing, and personal narratives are presented to illustrate Bollywood's role in shaping linguistic processes of indexicality, bivalency, and identity. In these ways, the chapter analyzes how media and language use together shape style and identity in this Asian American community, as well as how this process varies between different locations of the South Asian diaspora.Less

Reel to Real : Desi Teens' Linguistic Engagements with Bollywood

Shalini Shankar

Published in print: 2009-01-01

This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans (Desis), especially youth, engage with these Hindi language films with English subtitles on a number of levels. The chapter focuses on the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films in two locations in the South Asian diaspora: Silicon Valley, CA and Queens, NY. Ethnographic and sociolinguistic data of conversational exchanges, commentary during viewing, and personal narratives are presented to illustrate Bollywood's role in shaping linguistic processes of indexicality, bivalency, and identity. In these ways, the chapter analyzes how media and language use together shape style and identity in this Asian American community, as well as how this process varies between different locations of the South Asian diaspora.

This chapter provides a transferable framework for developing a structured education programme aimed at preventing type 2 diabetes in people of South Asian ethnic origin. It shows that there is a ...
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This chapter provides a transferable framework for developing a structured education programme aimed at preventing type 2 diabetes in people of South Asian ethnic origin. It shows that there is a lack of evidence surrounding lifestyle modification programmes that are both effective and suitable for implementation in a primary health care setting. In addition, there has been little attempt to address the specific needs of people from ethnic minority backgrounds, who tend to have an increased risk of many chronic diseases compared to white Europeans, and who form a large proportion of the population in many urban areas. The chapter describes a method of addressing this need, and provides the health care community with a systematic and reproducible approach to designing and developing a lifestyle modification programme.Less

The development of a diabetes prevention programme for a South Asian population: translating evidence and theory into practice

Published in print: 2009-11-26

This chapter provides a transferable framework for developing a structured education programme aimed at preventing type 2 diabetes in people of South Asian ethnic origin. It shows that there is a lack of evidence surrounding lifestyle modification programmes that are both effective and suitable for implementation in a primary health care setting. In addition, there has been little attempt to address the specific needs of people from ethnic minority backgrounds, who tend to have an increased risk of many chronic diseases compared to white Europeans, and who form a large proportion of the population in many urban areas. The chapter describes a method of addressing this need, and provides the health care community with a systematic and reproducible approach to designing and developing a lifestyle modification programme.